HOLIDAY GIFT BOOKS : Santa Totes the Untouted as Well as the Heavily Promoted

Choosing gift books must pose as grave a problem for Santa as it does for holiday shoppers. It’s not hard to find something for people who’ve been naughty--not with all those copies of “Prime Time” on the shelves. But finding the right book for someone who’s been nice may require checking the list (and the stores) twice or more.

Anyone who liked the film “Never Cry Wolf” would appreciate The Arctic Wolf: Living With the Pack by L. David Mech (Voyageur: $24.95 until Dec. 31, $27.95 thereafter; 128 pp.; illustrated; 0-89658-099-7), a personal account of the author’s experiences observing animals in the wild. The handsome photographs of these majestic animals in their natural habitat stir an almost primal response of awe and fear.

You don’t have to fish to enjoy Trout River by Larry Madison (Abrams: $49.50; 168 pp., illustrated; 0-8109-1697-5), a pictoral celebration of America’s rivers and streams. The handsome color photographs form an elegiac portrait of the changing beauty of the seasons, although the overall effect suggests an outsized Sierra Club calendar. Even more impressive is Jacques Cousteau: Whales by Jacques Cousteau and Yves Paccalet (Abrams: $49.50; 280 pp., illustrated; 0-8109-1046-2). This lavish volume contains some staggering photos of whales breeching, feeding, etc., and some appalling shots of the carnage that occurs aboard a whaling vessel. Either book would please a nature lover.

A hard-core “Garfield” fan might like The Painted Cat by Elizabeth Foucart-Walker and Pierre Rosenberg (Rizzoli: $50; 224 pp., illustrated; 0-8478-0995-1). But cats are just minor decorative elements in most of the paintings in this superficial survey, rather than the focus of the artists’ attention. (How many people who look at Manet’s “Olympia” will notice there’s a cat perched at the courtesan’s feet?)

The Unicorn of Kilimanjaro by Robert Vavra (William Morrow: $39.95; 216 pp., illustrated; 0-688-06850-2) ranks as this year’s silliest gift book. The text, a bad pastiche of Hemingway, describes a safari to photograph Unicornuus africanus ; the accompanying pictures of some poor nag tricked out with a horn and a Vidal Sassoon mane are shot in the gauzey soft focus of a Penthouse centerfold. The result is a hysterically vulgar book that Humbert Humbert might present to Dolores Haze.

Big, glitzy volumes on collectibles, normally a staple of the holiday book trade, seem to be in short supply this year, despite skyrocketing auction prices. Instead of the usual tomes on diamonds, there’s The Bakelite Jewelry Book by Corrine Davidov and Ginny Dawes (Abbeville: $35; 168 pp., illustrated; 0-89659-867-5). This survey of campy plastic jewelry would be more enjoyable if the authors had resisted the temptation to use song titles and sophomoric puns as photo captions. Few people in Los Angeles have the room to collect neon signs, but The New Let There Be Neon by Rudi Stern (Abrams: $35) pays rhapsodic hommage to neon art. Some of these brilliantly colored fantasies are dazzlingly beautiful; others are dazzling kitsch, like the statue of the Madonna that sports a neon halo.

The National Air and Space Museum by C. Bryan (Abrams: $65; 504 pp., illustrated; 0-8109-1380-1) allows the reader to peruse one of the most popular exhibits in the Smithsonian Institution without having to buck the crowds (estimated at 9.5 million visitors each year). Jonathan Wallen’s crisp, double-page photos of vehicles that range from The Spirit of St. Louis to the Apollo 11 Command Module capture the thrill of flight--and recall the excitement U.S. Space Program once generated.

The Landmarks of New York by Barbaralee Diamonstein (Abrams: $45; illustrated, 0-8109-1270-8) surveys the city’s designated monuments, from the Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House (pre-1614) to Gordon Bunshaft’s Lever House (1950-52). The large format (9 1/2 x 11) and chronological listing of the entries makes this volume impractical to carry as a guidebook, but the nearly 700 photographs enable the reader to stroll through three centuries and five boroughs without leaving his easy chair and teacup.

The inhabitants of a kinder, gentler America will probably need every laugh they can get during the next 12 months, and cartoon books rank among the year’s best gift choices. Although most of the cartoons have been collected before, The Essential Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson (Andrews & McMeel: $12.95, paper; 255 pp.; 0-8362-1805-1) is, simply, the best cartoon book of 1988. The hilarious new story, “A Nauseous Nocturne” (Calvin’s fantasy of being eaten in his bed by a comic book monster), proves that Watterson ranks among the most imaginative newspaper cartoonists working in America today. (This book makes an excellent gift--or a self-reward for a hard day of shopping.)

The Far Side Gallery 3 by Gary Larson (Andrews & McMeel: $10.95, paper; 191 pp.; 0-8362-1831-0) contains enough bizarre cartoons about cows, frowsy housewives and snakes to keep fans laughing until Larson returns from his hiatus in 1990. (No other cartoonist would draw a caveman complaining about being served “Primordial soup--again!”)

The World of George Price: A 55-Year Retrospective by George Price (Beaufort: $24.95; 256 pp.; 0-8253-0449-0) offers an overview of the angular, off-the-wall drawings of one of The New Yorker’s finest artists.

Readers who prefer political satire to absurdity will enjoy Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Berke Breathed’s Tales Too Ticklish to Tell (Little, Brown: $7.95, paper; 122 pp.; 0-316-10735-2). This new “Bloom County” anthology includes Opus’ brief stint as a male stripper, the invasion of a vicious but “telegenic” alien who looks suspiciously like Oliver North and a television crusade against the evils of “Penguin Lust.”

Matt Groening satirizes the problems of growing up in America in Childhood Is Hell (Pantheon: $5.95; paper; unpaged; 0-679-72055-3). Wee Little Bongo asks his father, “If animals have no souls, where will Rover spend Eternity?” “Do amoebas feel love?” and “If you vote Republican, does that make you an accomplice to their crimes?” Groening’s first three books on love, work and school have been collected as Box Full of Hell (Pantheon: $17.85, paper; unpaged; 0-679-72111-8), an excellent present that gives new meaning to the statement, “Give ‘em hell.”

It’s unlikely that anyone on the planet has escaped Disney’s mammoth PR campaign and doesn’t know that Mickey Mouse turned 60 this year. But just in case someone has, two noteworthy books celebrate the career of the world’s most famous rodent.

Mickey Mouse Movie Stories (no author; Abrams: $19.95; 208 pp., illustrated; 0-8109-1529-4), an affectionate re-creation of an early Disney book that tells the stories of a dozen Mickey shorts, will delight cartoon fans who can’t afford a copy of the 1934 original--now a prized collectible. The animated Mickey was a very different character from the shrewd private eye who appeared in the daily comic strip during the 1930s. Mickey Mouse in Color by Floyd Gottfredson (Pantheon: $39.95; 192 pp.; 0-394-57519-9) includes some of his best newspaper adventures--cartoon spoofs of the popular movie detective serials.

Bugs Bunny is one of the few animated characters whose popularity can rival Mickey’s, and That’s All Folks: The Art of Warner Bros. Animation by Steve Schneider (Henry Holt: $39.95; 252 pp., illustrated; 0-8050-0889-6) chronicles the career of the wascally wabbit and his cartoon cohorts. Schneider offers an enthusiastic, balanced account of the development of the studio and the artists who worked there, but most readers will buy this book for the reproductions of hundreds of sketches, animation drawings, backgrounds and photographs. The perfect gift for an animation fan.

Finally, one of the season’s most heavily promoted books, Christmas in America, by David Cohn (Collins: $35; 208 pp., illustrated; 0-00-217968-7) offers quick “sight bites” of stereotypically picturesque moments--costumed Santas riding a New York subway, a house hung with 240,000 lights, little kids in school pageants. The apparent purpose of the book is to show readers what Christmas is supposed to be. A few more books like this one and no one will have to bother celebrating holidays: They’ll just look at the pictures.